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discoverynews:

treehugger:

image credit: Ondrej Pakan

Perspective is everything. And that is especially true when considering these amazing photographs by Ondrej Pakan. He takes creepy crawlies that you’d usually steer clear of and turns them into something beautiful.

See the whole collection on TreeHugger: Amazing Macro Photographs of Insects Covered in Dew

Very cool. If you aren’t following our friends over at Treehugger, you should do that now!

archiemcphee:

From the Department of Animals with Built-in Awesome Hats:

This is a Northern Royal Flycatcher, a species of bird in the Tyrannidae family. It is found in Mexico, south through most of Central America, to north-western Colombia and far western Venezuela. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests. They are 16.5–18 cm (6½-7”) long, with an erectile fan-shaped crest, coloured red in the male and yellow-orange in the female. The display with the crest fully raised is seen extremely rarely, except during banding sessions. And we must say, it’s pretty spectacular.

Photo by Aves Internacionales

[via TYWKIWDBI]

discoverynews:

Human Societies Starting to Resemble Ant Colonies

The similarities offer a look at just how ever-growing human societies could collapse.

The human population is growing at such a staggering rate that we are organizing ourselves more like ant supercolonies, with new research finding that we have more in common now with some ants than we do with our closest living animal kingdom relatives.

The new study, published in the journal Behavioral Ecology, points out that both humans and ants (termites, too) live in societies that may consist of up to a million plus members.

keep reading

thefluffingtonpost:

Puppy Charged With Reckless Cuteness

A Washington puppy named Rául has been charged with reckless cuteness and declared a danger to others by authorities.

“You can’t just walk around being this cute like it’s nothing,” says Ralph Collins, the prosecuting attorney in this case. “You’re going to cause accidents. People will fall into manholes. Cars will fly off the road. This puppy needs to be behind bars.”

Via Caroline Smith.

archiemcphee:

It’s official, LEGO bricks can be used to build pretty much anything, including a mobile home for a hermit crab. Meet Harry the Hermit Crab who lives in the rock pool of the Atlantis Discovery Area at Legoland in Windsor, Berkshire, England.

“Hermit crabs have soft bodies and need to adopt abandoned shells for protection. It’s well known that LEGOs aren’t just for kids and Harry chose this [awesome] LEGO shell over a bunch of other sea and snail shells available for his perusal. Initially, the builders weren’t sure that Harry would move into the custom shell, but now he seems quite comfortable in his new home. If there is ever a shortage of shells in the wild, we know that now they’ve got an inexhaustible supply, thanks to LEGO maniacs everywhere.”

Visit Technabob to watch a video of Harry scuttling about whilst wearing his awesome little LEGO shell. Go Harry, go!